The mission of Greater Columbus Right to Life is to build a culture that protects innocent human life from the moment of conception until natural death. One of the biggest program goals within that mission: working within the communities we serve to end abortion.
Integral to meeting that goal is our work with individuals, families, church communities, and our pro-life colleagues to bring a faithful, united, and focused approach to the work of ending abortion. The public face of that work includes projects like sidewalk ministry and prayer, public demonstrations, and educational programming in churches and schools. Backing up much of that work, however, are the things we do behind the scenes to hold abortion clinics accountable, track trends, and deploy resources to the communities where they are most needed.
As part of our work to track trends and deploy resources to the communities where they are most needed, we not only monitor the number of abortions happening in our community, but we also look at the number of women who are having abortions by county. Several years ago, we realized that this only tells part of the story, and we began looking at the number of abortions happening as a percentage of the total number of otherwise viable pregnancies. What we've found helps us to better understand how abortion is impacting communities regardless of the size of that community. After all, counties with larger populations are more likely to have larger numbers of abortions. But tracking shifts in abortion trends and the abortion rate from community to community can help us to understand what areas need a little more help and which areas we should look to for ideas to improve.
What we've found has been astonishing. Abortion rates in Ohio vary widely across the state, from less than 1% in Lawrence County to nearly 27% in Cuyahoga.
It is important to remember that these numbers only provide a snapshot of what is going on based on abortions reported to the Ohio Department of Health under Ohio law. This means the numbers do not include women who may reside in Ohio but had an abortion in another state or abortions obtained illegally (ex: by mail) or (illegally) not reported to the ODH. It also does not include anything that is not considered induced abortion under Ohio law, such as embryos destroyed during IVF or prohibited from implantation due to various contraceptives.
We generally serve as the local pro-life organization to those in Franklin, Morrow, Union, Delaware, Madison, Fairfield, Licking, and Pickaway Counties, but we also extend our programming whenever possible to help individuals in other counties, especially those within the Diocese of Columbus that do not have formally organized pro-life organizations, and some of our projects have statewide reach. If you would like to join us in our efforts, obtain additional information for your county, or invite us to speak to your church or organization, please give us a call or contact our Speaker’s Bureau at www.gcrtl.org/speaker.
If you would like to support all of our work, including our accountability and research projects like the Abortion Rate Project, please consider making a donation today. Our work exists only because of your support.
Integral to meeting that goal is our work with individuals, families, church communities, and our pro-life colleagues to bring a faithful, united, and focused approach to the work of ending abortion. The public face of that work includes projects like sidewalk ministry and prayer, public demonstrations, and educational programming in churches and schools. Backing up much of that work, however, are the things we do behind the scenes to hold abortion clinics accountable, track trends, and deploy resources to the communities where they are most needed.
As part of our work to track trends and deploy resources to the communities where they are most needed, we not only monitor the number of abortions happening in our community, but we also look at the number of women who are having abortions by county. Several years ago, we realized that this only tells part of the story, and we began looking at the number of abortions happening as a percentage of the total number of otherwise viable pregnancies. What we've found helps us to better understand how abortion is impacting communities regardless of the size of that community. After all, counties with larger populations are more likely to have larger numbers of abortions. But tracking shifts in abortion trends and the abortion rate from community to community can help us to understand what areas need a little more help and which areas we should look to for ideas to improve.
What we've found has been astonishing. Abortion rates in Ohio vary widely across the state, from less than 1% in Lawrence County to nearly 27% in Cuyahoga.
It is important to remember that these numbers only provide a snapshot of what is going on based on abortions reported to the Ohio Department of Health under Ohio law. This means the numbers do not include women who may reside in Ohio but had an abortion in another state or abortions obtained illegally (ex: by mail) or (illegally) not reported to the ODH. It also does not include anything that is not considered induced abortion under Ohio law, such as embryos destroyed during IVF or prohibited from implantation due to various contraceptives.
We generally serve as the local pro-life organization to those in Franklin, Morrow, Union, Delaware, Madison, Fairfield, Licking, and Pickaway Counties, but we also extend our programming whenever possible to help individuals in other counties, especially those within the Diocese of Columbus that do not have formally organized pro-life organizations, and some of our projects have statewide reach. If you would like to join us in our efforts, obtain additional information for your county, or invite us to speak to your church or organization, please give us a call or contact our Speaker’s Bureau at www.gcrtl.org/speaker.
If you would like to support all of our work, including our accountability and research projects like the Abortion Rate Project, please consider making a donation today. Our work exists only because of your support.
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